Duxut Custos
by OneDarkandStormyNight
Summary: After spending several days investigating a murder in the first snowfall of winter, Harry's neglect to buy himself a decent coat results in a worried, pacing ghost. Sickfic; pure h/c.
1. Chapter 1

_Hello, everyone! I have to post this quickly, because I have to be somewhere, but I want you to know that if you've sent me a message, it's been read-I'm just waiting for a good time to sit down and give a decent reply. This fic is pretty much nothing more than a plotless hurt/comfort sickfic, because I have a serious weakness for sickfics._

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**Duxut Custos**

It started so small.

It had happened a hundred times—Harry returned home after working a case with Murphy, tired and thoughtful. This time, he explained to Bob that a body had been found in a snow pile on the edge of the city, and they had spent the entire day going from one end of the city to the other following up leads. With the whole day spent outdoors and nothing but that thin rag he called a scarf to keep his face and throat warm, it was no wonder the idiot had started coughing by the end of the night.

The next day Harry got home even later, having followed up a difficult lead that left him so weary and worn that he collapsed into his bed without even changing his clothes or speaking more than a grunt to Bob.

Two days later, the case was finished and the killer caught; Murphy was pleased and the police department impressed; and Harry was curled up in his chair with a steaming mug, a bag of cough drops, and an aspirin.

Bob refused to show him any kind of pity, reciting only that he'd told him to buy a new scarf and a decent coat at the beginning of autumn, and if he couldn't at least pretend to be a responsible adult who plans ahead every once in a while, it shouldn't take him by surprise that there might be a consequence here and there.

Then the next morning came, and Harry didn't feel like eating despite that his last meal had been a grilled cheese around noon yesterday at some sticky cafe in downtown. Instead, he made himself another pot of tea (but he would have slept until it was cold had Bob not made a sarcastic comment about it in his ear).

Bob did not let his worry show until the following afternoon, when he felt movement in the house for the first time in over fourteen hours. He entered the kitchen and found Harry seated at the table, head resting in one hand, eyes barely open and bright with fever, his entire body shuddering with every bout of coughing. Hearing the faint rattle in every breath, Bob suggested that perhaps he needed something more medicinal than a diet of only tea.

"I don't have the money, Bob; you know that."

"You _do_ recall you're a wizard."

Harry rubbed his forehead with a tiny wince.

"Too tired to figure it out right now," he muttered. "I'll find a spell later."

He stood and poured his tea, either ignoring or not noticing that Bob was watching his trembling hands. The sofa creaked as he laid down on it, and then three more hours passed in a silence that was only shattered by the unpleasant clamor of the phone.

When it rang seven times and he heard no response to answer it, Bob emerged from his skull, wondering if Harry had gone out without his realizing it.

He paused in momentary confusion, seeing the motionless lump of a form beneath a thick blanket on the sofa. The low late afternoon light made Harry's face difficult to distinguish until he was bent down in front of him. Bob took in the beads of sweat on Harry's forehead, his fluttering eyelids, and the gauntness of his face, and felt a pang of unease.

"Harry?"

There was no answer except the now-obvious rattle of the younger man's breathing.

"Harry!"

This time, there was a faint twitch in his peaceful expression, and then Harry's deep brown eyes flickered open. It took a long moment for them to become alert and focused.

"Bob."

He seemed to choke on just that one syllable, and he did not stop coughing violently into the blanket until it seemed his body simply got too tired.

"Harry, you need to get up," Bob told him, loudly, because the man's eyes hadn't opened again. "You need to call someone to come and take you to a doctor."

He glanced over at the phone, sitting on the table across the room, and he pushed aside the feeling that it was almost mocking him, reminding him that he couldn't call and get help for his friend himself.

Harry murmured something, shifting under the covers.

Bob reached out and allowed his hand to caress along Harry's forehead—never touching, of course, but at least he could get a sense of the heat there; the spiritual world and the living world had overlaps so that in some ways not even the High Council could stop him from feeling, or being felt.

"Bob," Harry grunted irritably.

Bob's touch seemed to be enough to pull him a little more awake, however, because he opened his eyes once more and saw his friend's concerned face.

"Your fever is much too high, Harry," Bob told him lowly. "You must get out from beneath those blankets."

Harry frowned, only pulling the blanket tighter around himself.

"Cold," he insisted.

Bob resisted the urge to say something condescending at the underlying rebelliousness.

"You must get up. You've barely eaten in days. You need food to regain strength."

"Bob. . .I really don't feel well."

Bob knew there was no hiding the way the soft, almost pleading words and those childlike brown eyes broke his heart (or whatever semblance he had in this form). He had seen Harry sick many times, particularly when he'd been a sad, lonely little boy, and suddenly that boy was all he could see in front him—then again, that's all Harry had ever really been in his eyes, though neither of them would ever admit it.

When Harry's eyes slipped immediately closed again, and his body relaxed in his cocoon of blankets, Bob sighed but did not leave him.

**To be continued**

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_Next chapter soon!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter ii**

It is an old myth that ghosts continuously walk the same paths they walked in life. While that certainly was not true of Bob, he believed he understood where the living would get such an idea. The spirits of their dead were not trapped in a loop; they were pacing. There was nothing as worrying as being able to do nothing but watch someone.

He passed the bookshelf for the eighth time in as many minutes, staring for just a moment at his skull tucked between a tome and a globe, despising the gross grin on his decorated face with a hatred he'd not felt in centuries. In a twisted way, he almost felt that Hrothbert was enjoying how his sins still brought agony—even if it was to his own ghost.

He looked away, moving closer to the couch where Harry had not even shifted in three hours.

He paused here as well, listening for any sign that the younger man was improving, but only shallow, hoarse breaths continued to fill the air.

He went from wall to wall once more, but then decided he could no longer bear the silence.

A formless but freezing hand against his chest made Harry shiver and try to pull the twisted blanket more effectively around himself. The motion sent the man into another fit of coughing; his dry throat made each cough a painful bark, and when he pulled his arm away from his mouth, a small stain of red darkened his soft grey sleeve.

"Harry."

Bob's voice was laced with horror at the sight.

The feverish man rolled onto his side, but at least his eyes were half-open and focused on Bob's face now.

"Harry, you've got to get help. Do you not understand that your life might be in danger?"

"I know," came the hoarse, half-conscious whisper. "I know, I know, Bob."

Bob moved hastily away when Harry slid his legs off the couch, pulling the blanket away with arms so weak it was as though the knitted fabric were ten times heavier.

The dead-and-damned sorcerer watched as Harry swayed where he sat, wishing that he could steady him with a warm, comforting hand and assure him that he would absolutely be cared for. As it was, however, he could only wince at his own helplessness while Harry doubled over, one arm around his torso.

Near-delirious as he was, Harry somehow felt Bob's gaze upon him, and whispered, as though explaining,

"My chest hurts."

Bob knelt down beside him, looking up to get a clear image of the young man's thin face and not caring how it looked when half of his leg and arm went through the couch.

"_How_ does it hurt?" he pressed earnestly, never moving his eyes away from the listless dark pair but paying close attention in his peripheral vision to the way Harry's arms tightened around himself.

Seeing that Harry's half-asleep mind was having trouble processing the vagueness of his question, Bob impatiently rephrased.

"Is it there all the time? Or just when you move, or cough? Is it like a cramp, or like a sharp stab?"

A few seconds of silence, but it was too long for him.

"Harry."

"It's all the time, I think, but it gets worse when I—breathe harder, and especially when I cough. It's bad when I cough."

_Bad_ he said in a way that made Bob equate the pain to unbearable torture, and his heart broke again at how even Harry's vocabulary was so childlike at times.

"You must get help," Bob said firmly, not even attempting to retain the biting cynicism that colored their relationship, leaving behind only the close affection and concern that was always lingering under the surface. "Just get to the phone, Harry. It's a mere three steps. You _can_ do that."

Harry was panting for broken breaths as it was, the coughing having stolen away any strength that remained from what little sustenance he'd received in the last four days. Bob was uncertain whether he actually could make it.

"I don't know," whispered Harry doubtfully, blinking up at the distance between him and the desk where the phone sat.

Bob was as proud as ever of him when he pushed himself up anyway—then, a cold feeling suffocated the relief when the man swayed on his feet. Harry gasped audibly as he nearly fell, but then he would have been fine; however, his deep gasp had restarted another bout of coughs. His body shuddered and he could remain upright for only a moment longer, before dizziness overcame him.

"Harry!"

Bob's cry went almost unheard, as Harry pitched forward onto his hands and knees on the dusty floor, shaking violently with every painful breath.

Bob bent down next to him, and though he had long-since trained himself not to try to reach out and touch the world anymore, one hand stretched out and hovered over Harry's back. He tried not to think about the fact that he could see the spine protruding even through the thin T-shirt, but he still found himself wondering if Harry had been eating enough before all of this had started. He had always been an complete moron when it came to caring for himself, and that was before Justin had showed his true colors and they had ended up half-scrounging for pennies from clients in this musty flat. He tried to recall how many decent meals Harry ate in a day, and found himself unable to find a good answer.

Distracted as he was with the miserable thought, Bob noticed after a moment that Harry's coughs were subsiding and with that, the muscles in his back and shoulders were relaxing and his arms were folding.

"No, Harry, don't," he snapped sharply, wishing with all his dark and damned soul that he could catch his friend before he collapsed altogether, and use his cursed magic to summon a cure while he held him.

Thanks to the gods, Harry stiffened at his voice, his eyes fluttering open where they'd begun to drift shut. He made one last, obvious effort to force his trembling muscles to work, but then he simply stopped as he was, palms and knees on the hard wooden floor.

"I can't," he whispered deliriously, the sweat from fever beading his forehead. "I can't."

He fell forward onto his elbows, and a harsh breath scraped his throat, like the coughs were trying to overtake him again, but his body was too weak even for that now. He settled on his side without another sound.

Bob realized only then that he was trembling as well, when he reached out and stroked a formless hand over Harry's lax face. Of course, his touch slipped through like mist, but Harry did not even flinch at the eerie chill it created as he usually did, even when sleeping.

"_Harry._"

He did not even raise his voice, knowing that the man would not stir. He continued to stroke his hand lightly over the fevered skin, however, in hopes that somehow the frigidness of his contact might cool it.

**To be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter iii**

Bob lifted his eyes for the first time in countless hours and saw the block of golden sunlight on the wall, shining through from the dirty window on the other side of the room. The entire night had gone by; Harry had not moved, and neither had he. The fever still burned, thankfully not rising but never falling either. Harry's breaths were shallow and sparse, the pulse in his throat slowly following suit.

Bob closed his eyes against the implications and swallowed the urge to weep for the first time in years. He reached out again, holding one hand on the top of Harry's head and curling the other around his shoulder in a semblance of touch. He slid his palm up and down the muscled arm like he could offer some comfort, when it reality he could barely feel it and if Harry could, it would give him nothing but chills.

He looked into Harry's white face when a tiny sound broke the silence, but he did not dare get his hopes up, and with good reason. Harry had been gasping out occasional wheezing breaths for the past two hours. It was getting more and more difficult for him to breathe.

In a flash, Bob imagined what would be in just a few more hours, sitting here on the cold, hard floor—the only thing he could feel in all the world—and watching Harry silently succumb to either dehydration or suffocation, whichever came first. And then more hours after that, his corpse lying on the floor in front of him until finally someone came in search of the infamous consulting wizard of Blackwater Street. (1)

Before he could fight off the image, Bob crumpled under the inevitable pain it would bring and a tiny sob ripped out of him. He covered his face with one hand as more quiet sobs escaped, but he kept one at the top of the sweaty dark head, because at least if he could feel the radiating heat he knew Harry was still alive.

He was torn between wanting to curl up in his skull and never come out again and wanting to scream and curse his own soul to hell. So often he complained about not being able to interact with the world; he had thought he was suffering then. There was nothing worse than this. This he could only compare to the moment he watched Winifred shot down with a perfectly aimed arrow.

The bell at the front door chimed.

Bob gasped, cutting off another soft sob, and he leapt to his feet all in the blink of an eye.

"Harry?" a woman's voice called out, sounding deliberately unamused, but he felt a rush of elated relief at recognizing it.

"Here!" he shouted as loudly as he could.

Then, abruptly he realized what he was doing. His gaze flickered instinctively to the skull on the shelf as he remembered the threats of the High Council. Reveal himself to any mortal of the human world, and he would be taken into their ownership. He wasn't fool enough to believe that was a state of protection, either. He imagined bare walls of some dusty vault, not seeing the sun or hearing anything but the voices of the guards until a hundred years had gone by and the Council deemed it "safe" to release him to a new owner.

He thought of his present owner and all his selfish thoughts vanished.

"Lieutenant, here, in the back room!"

When Murphy's shadow appeared, the relief swept over him like a wave, hitting him hard enough to overwhelm him for a moment.

The woman lieutenant stopped at the sight of him, and he was sure he must have looked eerie, a silhouetted figure in black standing in someone else's dark home.

"Who are you?" she questioned, not quite accusatory but certainly distrustful. "Is Dresden here?"

"Please," he came very close to pleading, not answering the first question at all (because, really, that was much too long a story), "he's here. He is very, very sick and you've got to get him to a hospital. Please, Lieutenant, I fear for his life."

It was then that her eyes must have adjusted to the shadows, because she gasped slightly as her gaze fell on the motionless form at Bob's feet. Even as she rushed toward him, however, she never took her attention fully away from Bob, noticeably keeping her hand at her side where her holster was.

When she finally bent down beside Harry, however, she apparently decided that Bob was not a threat. Giving Harry all her attention, she pressed two fingers against the man's throat to count his pulse and the other hand she put on his forehead.

"What happened?" she demanded.

When she received no answer, Murphy looked up impatiently to repeat her question, but the white-haired Englishman was gone.

She scanned all around the room, but there was no sign that there had ever been anyone at all. For the moment, she accounted it to yet another weird Dresden thing and focused on the emergency at hand, but logged the incident in her memory to bring up later (though she doubted she'd get any real answers from the unconscious "wizard" before her).

She whipped out out her cell phone, and as her authoritative voice echoed in the otherwise silent room, she never knew every word was heard by the smiling skull on the shelf.

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"Hey, thanks for the ride back."

"Sure," Murphy replied, surprising him with a warm smile—and with not a hint of grouchiness in her voice, either. This had really been a close one.

He took in the familiar smell of old books and incense, never more glad to be back in his drafty old home. Even the stack of bills that had accumulated in his absence didn't seem so bad, especially since over half of the mail looked like notes from prospective clients.

"Hey, Harry."

He looked up from where he'd gotten distracted reading one of the notes, and found that that permanent solemnity was back in Murphy's expression as she stood in his front doorway.

"Yeah?"

"I need to ask you—when I found you the other day. . .well, the fact of the matter is I _wouldn__'__t_ have found you, if there hadn't been this man. He had white hair and blue eyes, I think, and he was wearing an old-fashioned-looking suit. He yelled from the back room. He was standing over you, but as soon as I looked away he was gone."

Harry set the mail down on the table and offered no explanation yet, allowing the silence to stretch on.

"Who was he, Harry?" she pressed, not falling for his game.

"How should I know?" he answered, not looking into her eyes and hoping the lie would suffice. "A client, maybe? I left the front door open."

"He called me 'Lieutenant.' He knew who I was."

"Murphy."

He turned a pleading gaze on her, one that he had given many times over the last few months. By now, she would know what it meant.

She took another moment, holding his gaze evenly as though debating on whether or not she should do what he wanted, but then she nodded slightly.

"All right, Harry," was all she said quietly, accepting in trust what he could not tell her. "Maybe there's an angel looking out for you."

Harry locked the front door behind her and turned to face the man he already sensed was there.

Bob's blue eyes were wide and open in a way they seldom were, and when he spoke his accent was soft.

"You were gone for so many days," he said. "I thought, perhaps—"

"I'm fine, Bob," he interrupted so that his friend wouldn't have to finish. "It was pneumonia, that's all."

"That's _all_?"

He winced. Wrong thing to say. It was always so hard to tell with Bob.

"Harry, you could have died. You nearly did!"

"But I didn't," he said with that childish smirk that had never failed to annoy the old ghost. "So that's that."

"No. No, that is _not_ 'that.'"

Irritation started to rise in Harry's chest. Yes, he had nearly died—didn't that make him deserving of a little peace and quiet, five minutes to enjoy being back home after a week in an impersonal hospital before Bob started up again?

Before he could even think about voicing this, however, he saw the look in Bob's eyes, and suddenly he wished, not for the first time since childhood, that he could hug the cranky old spirit.

As it was, he stepped close enough to force Bob to look at him, and said, gently,

"Hey, I'm all right. See? Not a ghost."

He knocked on the solid table for emphasis. Blue eyes glared sidelong at him, but the glare was without heat.

"Harry, you must learn to take better care of yourself," Bob continued.

The infuriated accusation in his tone had faded into that familiar grumpy sort of concern—and something else, something new, that Harry couldn't quite decipher. It almost sounded sad, though why that should be, he had no idea; he was home, healthy, and well-rested.

"I do," he said with a haphazard shrug, and it was more a joke to lighten the mood than anything (because of course they both knew he certainly _did not_).

"_No,_ Harry."

He froze where he'd barely taken a step around Bob toward the kitchen. There was definitely something very deeply wrong with that tone; it was one he'd never heard before, in all his years with this peculiar sorcerer. There was enough grief in those three little syllables to span whole lifetimes—and perhaps, he realized, that's exactly how much grief it was.

He met Bob's intense gaze with surprise, and he knew his expression was solemn enough to show that he was not going to make any more jokes. He stayed silent, allowing Bob to say whatever he needed.

"What you do requires risk, I know," Bob said, voice calm in comparison to the electric emotion in his eyes. "Every day, you work to protect innocents from the dangers of a cruel, dark realm of magic of which they know nothing. You face creatures worse than nightmares; you do it bravely, unselfishly, and you receive very little in return."

Harry could feel the shock coloring his cheeks. He could not recall the last time Bob had spoken with such candid approval about what he did. Oftentimes, it was just the opposite, with his complaining over what Harry should have done differently and why his life was going virtually nowhere. It was the role he had taken—Harry's reminder that the rent was due, that the bread was burning, that he was an ordinary man who needed ordinary things like a new pair of socks and human interaction. Never before had Bob become this…_angel_.

"You experience distrust and, at times, persecution from all sides, not to mention you have the Council breathing down the back of your neck at any given moment."

Harry gave a breathy chuckle at that and half-expected Morgan to pop up out of nowhere just on general principle.

"And, to top it all off, you must lie to your one ally constantly or you'll be imprisoned and she'll be marked as a threat by the Council, or worse—you'll both be executed according to the secrecy laws."

He hadn't even really thought that far in his life, to be honest. Apparently, Bob had been doing all the caring for the both of them.

"For all these things, I admire you."

Harry found himself at a loss as to how to respond. Bob didn't seem to expect it at all, because after allowing only a heartbeat of time for the words to sink in, he added,

"Please, Harry, there's so much more for me to be worrying about—buy yourself a coat. If this were ever to happen again, Murphy might not show up, and I'll be forced to watch something so completely pointless take you."

Suddenly, Harry felt like a moron and an asshole both at the same time. The whole time, from when he'd woken up in the hospital with fluids in his IVs to when he'd first seen Bob just now, he hadn't even thought about it—what it must have been like, to watch someone, anyone, slowly dying just a few feet away from a telephone and be unable to do anything.

He had never particularly pitied Bob for his plight. For one thing, Bob did not want pity; he wanted respect and a place in the world, so that's what Harry offered him. Now, however, Harry's heart was abruptly breaking for this ancient warlock who had more than paid for his sins, and would continue paying probably until the end of time, with a host of memories of loved ones long-buried without him.

And Harry was one of those loved ones. That much was obvious by the watery sheen that made Bob's eyes look like tiny crystal-clear pools.

He started to say something, to apologize at the very least, but nothing he said could change anything, past or future.

Instead, he moved with intent to the back room and picked up the skull from the shelf. Bob followed—or maybe disappeared and appeared again behind him, he could never be sure at this point.

"That consignment shop on the corner is open," he said, shoving the ornate skull into his backpack. "Want to walk with me? I could use your company. A week is too long."

Bob's expression softened at the peace offering. Harry never offered to take him anywhere, even when he complained about being cooped up all the time, for fear of a mortal discovering the secret of the skull and its incorporeal occupant.

Harry struggled not to grin at the hasty, controlled way Bob nodded.

"Good."

He pulled the backpack straps securely over his shoulders and let Bob step first over the threshold and into the pale light of the wintry afternoon.

**END**

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(1) I couldn't find any mention of the name of the street where Harry lives, so I assume there's not an official one and just made up something that sounded wizardy.

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_Pneumonia: the most convenient sickfic sickness. I hope you enjoyed! I'll probably write more for this fandom. I'm still working on my book for now, though-and I'm taking up drawing and painting, so wish me luck with that too!_


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